Inspiration | Shutter Block and Robert Hutinski

From Hutinski's series "The Mirror"

Shutterblock

If writers and musicians experience writer's block, what do photographers experience? Shutter block? Recently, I have not been very inspired to make photographs. It isn't that I don't have the desire to get out of the house and take photos. Sometimes, I just don't know what to take them of.

I have been spending evenings roaming the world-wide-web looking at images. World Press, fashion, creative portraiture, landscapes, bodyscapes, otherscapes... The list goes on. For a month, my late-night existence has been limited to photoblogs, photographer websites and Flickr/500px streams. The wife goes to bed and I head to the lazy boy, staying up stupid hours to thumb(nail) through images seemingly without purpose.

Yet, there is reason behind looking at others' photographic work. Perhaps photos themselves are the primers that photographers use to create, to be inspired. Fellow photographer Jessica Berggrun recently said to me, "There is nothing new. Being original now means appreciating what has already been done and then adding yourself to it." 

A photographer whose work I keep coming back to, is Slovenia's Robert Hutinski. Robert's work has been deemed by some as politically incorrect.  Continually, the word haunting is used to describe his images. In his series Ecce Homo, Hutinski explores the Holocaust. Left alone by most, Robert explores the human and what Nietzsche would call the "too human." His collections, such as The Book of Death - Metamorphisis and the highly erotic Transference, beg the viewer to slow down and actually see the body of work instead of simply clicking the right arrow on your browser. At no point do you feel the need to rapidly click next, next, next when gawking at Hutinski's creations.

Using public photographs and his own personal work, Hutinsky creates a culture of memories that are universal. For example, the series titled Family Album Or Seminar On Youth, uses photographs from private collections as well as photographs from the Central Library of Celje. By using these photographs, Robert proves that "every click of the shutter presents a new source of recording the public subconscious." Hutinski feels that, "the essence of communication, be it verbal or otherwise, is to offer your view to others and share it with them. Sharing your own view, a dialogue with those who think differently than you, is the only true purpose of human existence. 

While Robert and I do think and create differently, we both wish to produce something that is meaningful. Despite our differences, Robert's work inspires me to work, to create and share my own view with world. Needless to say, I know that the hours in the lazy boy did indeed have purpose. By finding the work of Robert Hutinski, I am (for the moment) rid of shutter block.  

Check out more of Robert Hutinski's impressive work.